The Comanche Empire

508 Pages·2008·3.618 MB·English

by  Pekka Hämäläinen

THE COMANCHE EMPIRE
THE LAMAR SERIES IN WESTERN HISTORY
The Lamar Series in Western History includes scholarly books of general pub-
lic interest that enhance the understanding of human affairs in the American
West and contribute to a wider understanding of the West’s significance in the
political, social, and cultural life of America. Comprising works of the highest
quality, the series aims to increase the range and vitality of Western American
history, focusing on frontier places and people, Indian and ethnic communities,
the urban West and the environment, and the art and illustrated history of the
American West.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus,
Past President of Yale University
William J. Cronon, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Philip J. Deloria, University of Michigan
John Mack Faragher, Yale University
Jay Gitlin, Yale University
George A. Miles, Beinecke Library, Yale University
Martha A. Sandweiss, Amherst College
Virginia J. Scharff, University of New Mexico
David J. Weber, Southern Methodist University
Robert M. Utley, Former Chief Historian National Park Service
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The Comanche
Empire
Pekka Hämäläinen
Published in Association with The William P. Clements Center for
Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University
Yale University Press
New Haven & London
Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 2008 by Yale University. All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by
Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by
reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Set in Electra type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hämäläinen, Pekka, 1967–
The Comanche empire / Pekka Hämäläinen.
p. cm. — (The Lamar series in western history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
“Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center
for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.”
ISBN 978-0-300-12654-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Comanche Indians—History. 2. Comanche Indians—Government relations.
3. United States—History—19th century. 4. Mexico—History—To 1810.
I. William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies. II. Title.
E99.C85.H27 2008
978.004'974572—dc22
2007041809
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Reversed Colonialism 1
ONE Conquest 18
TWO New Order 68
THREE The Embrace 107
FOUR The Empire of the Plains 141
FIVE Greater Comanchería 181
SIX Children of the Sun 239
SEVEN Hunger 292
EIGHT Collapse 321
Conclusion: The Shape of Power 342
List of Abbreviations 363
Notes 365
Bibliography 445
Index 475
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Acknowledgments
Several individuals and institutions helped me complete this book. I would
like to thank Markku Henriksson, David Wishart, and John Wunder, who guided
me into the world of academia, whose own scholarship has been an inexhaust-
ible source of inspiration, and who have never failed to challenge me intellec-
tually and otherwise. This book would not exist without the counsel and en-
couragement of David Weber. He has been a staunch supporter of my work and
read the manuscript in its various stages, steering my formulations toward bal-
ance, precision, and clarity. Elliott West read the manuscript twice, improving it
greatly with his keen insights and shrewd criticism. My debt to him is large.
A research fellowship at the William P. Clements Center for Southwest
Studies at Southern Methodist University offered me a stimulating environment
for revising and rethinking my work. The Clements Center’s manuscript work-
shop brought together several prominent scholars to discuss my project. I am
deeply indebted to the workshop participants—Edward Countryman, David
Edmunds, Morris Foster, Todd Kerstetter, James Snead, Daniel Usner, Omar
Valerio-Jiménez, David Weber, Elliott West, and John Wunder—for their cri-
tique and advice. I want to give a special note of thanks to Andrea Boardman for
all her help during my stay at SMU. Subsequently, a generous two-year fellow-
ship at the University of Helsinki’s Collegium for Advanced Studies allowed me
to write the bulk of this book in an intellectually lively setting. I would also like
to thank Texas A&M University and the University of California, Santa Barbara,
for financial support.
Many people have read all or parts of the manuscript and let me test my
ideas in spirited conversations and debates. I am deeply grateful to Gary Clay-
ton Anderson, Matthew Babcock, Ned Blackhawk, Guillaume Boccara, Colin
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Calloway, Brian DeLay, Jason Dormandy, Ross Frank, Sarah Griffith, Andrew
Isenberg, Ben Johnson, John Lee, Andrea McComb, Patrick McCray, Cecilia
Méndez, Susan Miller, Jean Smith, Gabriela Soto Laveaga, Paul Spickard, Todd
Wahlstrom, and Martina Will de Chaparro. Thomas Kavanaugh generously
shared his vast knowledge of Comanche culture and history. There are also
debts that dissolve into friendships forged in shared experiences: I was fortunate
to write my first book while my good friends Mark Ellis, Mikko Saikku, and Sam
Truett finished theirs. I could always rely on them for support and solid advice.
I owe special thanks to Lee Goodwin, who shared her deep knowledge of archi-
val depositories, located crucial documents, and engaged me in many sparkling
historiographical discussions. She also read the manuscript with an unfailing
eye for detail, saving me from many mistakes. Jennifer Mundy from the Special
Collections Office of UCSB’s Davidson Library offered invaluable assistance in
retrieving obscure sources.
Several people at Yale University Press made the transformation of the manu-
script into a book a delightful experience. My editor, Chris Rogers, immediately
shared my vision for the book, and his perceptive editorial suggestions were im-
mensely helpful during the final revisions. Laura Davulis and Jessie Hunnicutt
steered the manuscript through production with reassuring aplomb, and Eliza
Childs, my copyeditor, streamlined my prose and engaged me in fruitful discus-
sions on style and syntax.
My greatest debt is to Veera Supinen who read and edited numerous versions
of this book and often directed my thinking on new paths. Her intelligence, wis-
dom, and grace have sustained this project from its inception to conclusion.
INTRODUCTION
Reversed Colonialism
This book is about an American empire that, according to conventional his-
tories, did not exist. It tells the familiar tale of expansion, resistance, conquest,
and loss, but with a reversal of usual historical roles: it is a story in which Indians
expand, dictate, and prosper, and European colonists resist, retreat, and struggle
to survive.
At the dawn of the eighteenth century, the Comanches were a small tribe of
hunter-gatherers living in the rugged canyonlands on the far northern frontier
of the Spanish kingdom of New Mexico. They were newcomers to the region,
having fled the political unrest and internal disputes in their old homelands on
the central Great Plains, and they were struggling to rebuild their lives in a for-
eign land whose absorption into the Spanish world seemed imminent. It was
here, at the advancing edge of the world’s largest empire, that the Comanches
launched an explosive expansion. They purchased and plundered horses from
New Mexico, reinvented themselves as mounted fighters, and reenvisioned their
place in the world. They forced their way onto the southern plains, shoved aside
the Apaches and other residing nations, and over the course of three generations
carved out a vast territory that was larger than the entire European-controlled
area north of the Río Grande at the time. They became “Lords of the South
Plains,” ferocious horse-riding warriors who forestalled Euro-American intru-
sions into the American Southwest well into the late nineteenth century.¹
The Comanches are usually portrayed in the existing literature as a formi-
dable equestrian power that erected a daunting barrier of violence to colonial
expansion.² Along with the Iroquois and Lakotas, they have been embedded in
collective American memory as one of the few Native societies able to pose a
significant challenge to the Euro-American conquest of North America. But the
1
2 Introduction
idea of a Comanche barrier leaves out at least half of the story. For in the mid-
eighteenth century Comanches reinvented themselves once more, this time as
a hegemonic people who grew increasingly powerful and prosperous at the ex-
pense of the surrounding societies, Indian and Euro-American alike. Gradually,
a momentous shift took shape. In the Southwest, European imperialism not
only stalled in the face of indigenous resistance; it was eclipsed by indigenous
imperialism.
That overturn of power relations was more than a historical glitch, a momen-
tary rupture in the process of European colonization of indigenous America. For
a century, roughly from 1750 to 1850, the Comanches were the dominant people
in the Southwest, and they manipulated and exploited the colonial outposts in
New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and northern Mexico to increase their safety,
prosperity, and power. They extracted resources and labor from their Euro-
American and Indian neighbors through thievery and tribute and incorporated
foreign ethnicities into their ranks as adopted kinspeople, slaves, workers, depen-
dents, and vassals. The Comanche empire was powered by violence, but, like
most viable empires, it was first and foremost an economic construction. At its
core was an extensive commercial network that allowed Comanches to control
nearby border markets and long-distance trade, swing surrounding groups into
their political orbit, and spread their language and culture across the midconti-
nent. And as always, long-term foreign political dominance rested on dynamic
internal development. To cope with the opportunities and challenges of their
rapid expansion, Comanches created a centralized multilevel political system, a
flourishing market economy, and a graded social organization that was flexible
enough to sustain and survive the burdens of their external ambitions.
The Comanches, then, were an interregional power with imperial presence,
and their politics divided the history of the Southwest and northern Mexico
into two sharply contrasting trajectories. While Comanches reached unparal-
leled heights of political and economic influence, material wealth, and internal
stability, the Spanish colonies, the subsequent Mexican provinces, and many
indigenous agricultural societies suffered from a number of disruptions typical
to peripheral regions in colonial worlds. Without fully recognizing it, the Span-
iards, French, Mexicans, and Anglo-Americans were all restrained and over-
shadowed in the continent’s center by an indigenous empire. That empire—its
rise, anatomy, costs, and fall—is the subject of this book.
Great American Indian powers have captivated scholarly imagination since
Hernán Cortés fought his way into Tenochtitlán and Francisco Pizarro marched
into Cuzco. Over the years, historians and archaeologists have uncovered sev-